Take City of London high-flyers who are being called into their boss's office to be told the recession is bringing good news and bad news.

The good news, they tell them, is they've drawn up a brilliant plan to protect them from car-jackers. The bad news is that the plan involves them getting the sack and handing back the keys to the company Merc.

How about actors? What must veteran thespians Dora Bryan and Thora Hird feel when they stare at the Oscar nominations list. There's Judi Dench set to pick up yet another statuette for playing a pensioner with special needs called Iris Murdoch. Meanwhile Thora and Dora get thrown a few bob for playing pensioners who need stairlifts and ortho-paedic baths at the back of papers owned by Rupert Murdoch.

And then there's students, who claim their lot is so miserable they would be better off giving up studying and going on the dole.

Now I'm all for them calling on the government to abolish these disgraceful student loans. But I'm a bit puzzled at their union claiming the average student is left with £13 less a week to live on than 18 to 24-year-olds claiming the Jobseeker's Allowance. And demanding tax-payers make up the difference.

As a former student myself who, like most of my university colleagues went on to earn considerably more than teenagers who started on government schemes, I offer this advice to today's scholars.

Instead of blocking pub bars by paying for half a lager and a packet of pork scratchings with your Switch card, then sitting down and whinging about how skint you are, why not do what the kids on the Jobseeker's Allowance have to do?